Page 22 of Midnight on the Scottish Shore

22

Dunnet Head Saturday, December 6, 1941

Lachlan’s legs wobbled as he ascended the fifty-one steps to the top of the lighthouse. He’d fought a stiff southwesterly wind as he’d bicycled from Creag na Mara. Thank goodness he’d studied the weather report and sailed from Scapa on Friday afternoon instead of Saturday morning. A gale was brewing, and he prayed he could return to service Monday morning.

Perhaps he shouldn’t have come. But in the winter, gales would cancel many trips.

At the top of the stairs, Cilla greeted him by taking his arm, grinning and singing in Dutch.

Commander Yardley sat at the table and smiled over his shoulder at Lachlan. “Apparently today is St. Nicholas’s Day, and Cilla is celebrating.”

She hauled Lachlan to the table. “You two have been good boys, and Sinterklaas put something in your little shoes yesterday evening.”

“Shoes?” At Lachlan’s place at the table rested an ink drawing of a wooden clog, decorated with his name and a flock of seabirds. A shortbread biscuit filled the circular opening of the shoe.

“Cheers.” Yardley raised his biscuit then took a bite.

Such a gift had cost her precious ration coupons—as well as time, creativity, and thought. “Thank you.”

“You wouldn’t think I’d been a good girl this year, would you? Yet look what Sinterklaas brought me.” With a sparkling smile, Cilla stood by the table, set down a black shoe, and pulled out two bits of string.

Lachlan lifted an eyebrow. Eventually she would explain.

She swung the strings back and forth. “It’s a gift for all of us.”

Lachlan turned a sad smile to Yardley. “If string is a good gift, times are bleak indeed.”

“Silly man.” Cilla laughed and laid the two pieces end to end on the table. “It’s a line, and it snapped.”

“I shall relieve the lieutenant’s confusion.” Yardley brushed biscuit crumbs from his fingers. “At the RDF station, we used to have separate aerials on the roofs of the transmitter hut and the receiver hut. In October, we exchanged them for a common aerial mounted on the receiver hut, which combines transmitting and receiving.”

“Aye.” Lachlan had seen the large rectangular array.

“Feeder lines were run from the transmitter hut to the receiver hut to support the new operations.”

Cilla lifted the bits of string. “On Wednesday, the feeder lines snapped.”

Lachlan bounced a frown between Cilla and Yardley. “How is that a gift? That will impede operations.”

“Only briefly,” Yardley said. “We’re installing stronger lines. Cilla came up with a brilliant idea.”

“Thank you, Commander.” A pretty smile brightened her face still more. “We’ll tell Kraus that Free Caledonia did it. I’ll say I saw my friend Maggie on Thursday—after I sent my Wednesday night message—and she said her boyfriend Fergus sneaked over the wall and snipped the lines.”

“Free Caledonia? I thought we—”

“MI5 has changed its mind,” Yardley said. “The Abwehr has ordered Cilla to commit sabotage as their highest priority. On Monday, Kraus told her if she can’t, they’ll extract her and bring in a new agent who will.”

A cold sensation filled his gut. “Extract her?”

Cilla folded in her lips and fiddled with the bits of string on the table.

“We won’t allow that.” Yardley released a sigh. “We might not catch the new agent, he might not turn as readily as Cilla did, and he might not be as good a double agent as she is.”

Cilla’s chin popped up. “You think I’m doing well?”

Yardley ignored her and kept his attention on Lachlan.

“Extract her?” he said. “How is that even possible?”

With nimble fingers, Cilla formed one piece of string into a circle. “I would travel to Lisbon. Since Portugal is neutral, I could travel freely from there to Germany.”

Yardley nodded. “Some of our double agents meet with their Abwehr handlers in Lisbon, but they always return to England.”

Cilla straightened up and tied the two strings in a knot. “If I couldn’t go to Lisbon, they’d send a U-boat. I’d be told to take a boat to certain coordinates.”

“A boat like the ones at Brough or Thurso,” Yardley said.

Lachlan tried to nod but couldn’t. His parents kept a motorboat at Brough, a sturdy vessel named Mar na Creag . “What would happen to you?” he asked Cilla.

“They would ... question me.”

“Question?” His voice stiffened. “Interrogate? Torture?”

Cilla dropped the knotted string on the table and strode to the window, her back to Lachlan. Wind buffeted the glass, and clouds rolled in, black with rain. “That would depend on whether they thought I’d turned. But I—I don’t want to go to Germany. They might send me somewhere else as an agent.”

“I doubt it,” Yardley said. “They’d have you work for the Abwehr in Germany or the Netherlands.”

“I couldn’t do that.” Cilla’s voice quivered, and she hugged herself. “I’m a good actress, yes. But when you pretend for too long, you grow comfortable. You forget to act, and the truth slides out. Or something upsets you and you speak your mind. I—I can’t go back. They’d kill me. It would only be a matter of time. It’s why I left in the first place.”

That cold sensation writhed in Lachlan’s stomach. If she was telling the truth, returning to the continent would sign her death warrant.

“We have no intention of sending you back,” Yardley said.

“Good,” Lachlan muttered under his breath. Wherever her allegiance lay when she came in April, she’d since proven herself.

Proven herself ... trustworthy?

A vise clamped around his throat, and he coughed.

Cilla turned from the window with a shaky smile. “You see, the snapped line truly is a gift.”

“Aye,” Lachlan choked out.

“Here’s my idea.” Cilla rushed back to the table, an odd light in her eyes. “I’ll say a Wren told me about the snapped line on Thursday morning, and when I went into town, Maggie told me Fergus was responsible. On Friday night, I went to the Claymore and Heath—that’s the pub in Thurso where Neil meets with his friends in Free Caledonia. I praised Fergus and asked if he wanted help. He sounded doubtful, but I said I know people who can send supplies. Maybe even explosives.”

The thought of explosives in the hands of Neil’s friends stirred Lachlan’s gut in an unpleasant fashion, but this was all pretend.

Yardley clasped his hands together on top of the table. “Germany wants to provoke an insurrection in Scotland. We plan to convince them Free Caledonia is the solution. We’ll say the group is radical and violent and ready to act—if only they had the means.”

“Ammunition,” Lachlan said. “Explosives.”

“And funds, which they will drop by parachute and MI5 will collect. Funds which will, ironically, help pay for the Double Cross program.”

“Aye.” It swam together in Lachlan’s head. “Depleting German stocks, using precious aviation fuel, diverting the Luftwaffe from bombing and minelaying.”

“We could shoot down their planes,” Cilla said.

Yardley murmured his disapproval. “It would look like a trap. They’d know you turned.”

Cilla shrugged. “All right. We can use their explosives to blow up something useless, and the press will rant about the dastardly saboteurs in our midst.”

The papers would be seen in Lisbon by Abwehr agents. “The Germans will think Cilla is a brilliant spy.”

“I am.” She struck a charming pose. “Now we need to write a short message to transmit tonight, plus a longer letter to send by post.”

Lachlan held up both hands to slow her down. “This will look abrupt. On Monday, they threaten to extract you if you dinnae commit sabotage, and on Wednesday—”

“Perhaps.” Yardley stood and motioned for Cilla to take her usual seat. “But it’s based on a real event. Their reconnaissance aircraft may have observed the aerial isn’t turning as usual.”

“Also, I’ve mentioned Free Caledonia in previous letters and said Maggie’s boyfriend is involved.” Cilla sat and leaned toward Lachlan, light dancing in her eyes. “Help me get to know Fergus. Tell me more about Neil and his friends.”

“In a nutshell?” Lachlan lifted half a smile. “Politics, pubs, and poetry.”

“Three P s!”

“Aye.” He chuckled.

Cilla steepled her hands together and grinned at the ceiling. “Maggie is nineteen, Fergus is twenty-eight. Her parents don’t think much of him, but she’s mad about him.”

“Handsome, is he?” Lachlan said.

“Very. He has a strong jaw, fiery red hair, and eyes of the richest brown.” Her mouth twitched.

Yardley snickered as he sauntered around the Fresnel lens.

Lachlan cleared his throat. “Having fun at my expense again, aye?”

“Always.” With her palms pressed tight, she clapped her fingertips together, over and over. “He actually has green eyes and reddish-blond hair. He wears it long, like a romantic poet.”

“He only reads the Scottish poets, of course.”

“Of course. He quotes them constantly.”

“But he’s a bad poet himself.”

“Oh yes.” Cilla’s hands flew apart, fingers wiggling in the air. “Every time he tries to write a poem, it ends up rhyming. He hates that.”

Lachlan laughed. “Robert Burns rhymes.”

“But no self-respecting modern poet does. Poor Fergus.”

“Poor Fergus indeed.” Lachlan rested his forearms on the table. “If Fergus is twenty-eight, why is he not in the Forces?”

“Did he go to prison?”

“That sounds too much like Neil. I dinnae want to draw attention to him or my family.”

Cilla pursed her lips. “Does Fergus have a bad heart?”

Lachlan circled his finger around the rough rim of his biscuit. “He needs to be strong enough to commit sabotage. We should give him a reserved profession, like farming. His father died—or his father is the one with a bad heart. He needs Fergus’s help.”

“Even as he grumbles about farming in poetic terms.” Cilla’s smile unfurled even more. “This is such fun. Fergus needs friends, yes?”

“Aye.” It was fun, wasn’t it? Working with her, their ideas stacking on each other’s, like stone blocks building a lighthouse.

“If only I could go to the Claymore and Heath and meet the real Free Caledonians.” Cilla pressed one finger to her chin. “What sort of men would belong? How about a scholar in his fifties? He wants to be a politician, thinks he’ll be the first prime minister of Scotland, but no one would ever vote for him.”

“Aye, and a workman with a criminal past.”

“Add some hotheaded youth.”

“Too young for the Forces, but willing to get dirty.”

“What would our fictional version of Free Caledonia do if they had explosives?” Cilla tapped her chin. “Sabotage Dunnet Head? The RAF fields nearby? Maybe the boat that ferries troops to Scapa?”

Yardley cleared his throat—he was still in the lightroom, was he? “We won’t do any of those things.”

“Of course not,” Cilla said. “These are ideas to play with, to inspire us for the fake sabotage we’ll commit.”

“Burns Night.” Light beamed from the tower they’d built. “On the twenty-fifth of January, we celebrate the birth of Rabbie Burns with a grand meal and the reading of poetry.”

“Oh!” Cilla’s eyes enlarged. “That would be the perfect time for Free Caledonia to do something big and dramatic and symbolic.”

“Aye.” A strange sense of anticipation took hold of him, and he fell deeper into the green-blue sea of Cilla’s gaze.

He blinked and sat back. A selkie. She was a selkie.

But what if ... what if she wasn’t?